#ticklish!hyacinth

Now, as your husband was enjoying your melodic humming and the sweet smell of the flowers that caressed his hair, you felt inside of you a bubbling wish to lean forward and whisper the good news into his ear. The good news you’d barely managed to fully apprehend on your own. It was scary to reveal such a tender, fragile and unpredictable thing as a pregnancy. There was too much that could still go wrong, too much that still stood between you and the day of birth. Yet, looking at Benedict all calm and relaxed made you wish to comment on how you hoped your child’s eyes would be like his or how you could imagine him holding the small bundle to his chest, a little nose peeking out from white cloth.

You leaned over, closer towards him and moved your hand to the side of his face. His half-closed lids blinked open and his smile deepened when his gaze landed on your tender face.

“Am I positively in bloom now?”

You snickered and carefully brushed your fingertips over the petals behind his ear, making Benedict shiver ever so slightly. “Any young lady would envy you for such an exquisite coiffure!”

Narrowing his eyes, Benedict snarled at you, shaking his head and sending a few petals flying off onto the grass. “You’re lucky I had four younger sisters with a similar taste for dressing me up or I would have long taken off over the meadows!”

Biting your bottom lip to keep from grinning too widely, you got on your knees in one swift motion to wrap your arms around your husband’s shoulders, bringing you faces closer together. “You wouldn’t even have taken off if I had brought a pair of scissors with me to experiment on your hair!”

He chuckled gently and moved an arm over the small of your back to pull you even closer. “It can’t possibly be a good thing that you are correct about this!”

His lips found yours and you melted into the kiss as if the sun had suddenly gotten strong enough to evaporate you. Smoothly you moved your chest over his torso, your hands following the outlines of his shoulders. He hummed into your mouth, his voice vibrating through your skin as your fingers found his face, where your thumbs started caressing the slightest hint of a stubble.

“Benedict,” you sighed, your smile mirrored on his lips, “I have something to-“

“(Y/N)!!” A shrill voice shouted from the front steps of the big country house. You were so surprised, you almost choked, your forehead knocking against your husband’s. Benedict grabbed your elbows to keep you from falling over, one eye closed against the pain of head-to-head contact.

“Oww,” he groaned, looking over his shoulder with faint annoyance. Hyacinth’ voice was easily discernible and lately, she’d managed to interrupt quite a few of your… get togethers.

“(Y/N), are you in the garden?!”  

Raising one hand to your forehead, you couldn’t keep from letting out a breathless laugh. “Ten minutes of peace were quite the luxury, I daresay.”

Benedict let out a sigh, but pulled the corners of his lips up in a little smile, when he saw the humour in your eyes. “Sooner or later, I am going to grab her and lock her in the closet!”

Comfortingly, you patted his chest, before moving your hand to his hair to straighten one crooked daisy. “She’d probably find that rather amusing.”

“Are you sure? She is so very … fourteen now!” Benedict said, an overly accentuated speck of fear concerning teenage-girlhood glinting in his eyes. “When the day comes that we have a fourteen year old daughter, you must help me make sure I never become the object of her wrath!”

Holding your breath, you turned to look at him in awe. Did he know? Had he already figured it out all by himself that you were pregnant? But no, his eyes merely showed signs of good-tempered amusement. He had not yet a clue, which made his comment all the more valuable to you. “I love you,” you stated with feeling and crashed your lips to his in such a surprising manner, that he almost fell over, which laced your kiss with his sweetest chuckles. Moving your face away, you hesitated for a second, gazing in his shining blue eyes, unsure whether you should tell him immediately.

“Are you alright?” He asked, his eyes twitching curiously. You bit down on your lip, enchanted by the way he could almost read your mind. The good news about possible upcoming parenthood would have to wait though. You wanted to tell him, when it was only the two of you.

“Perfectly so,” you therefore exclaimed, before bringing your hands to his chest to push him over for good. Quickly you rose to your feet to answer to Hyacinth’ incessant shouting, laughing at Benedict’s attempts to grab for your heels in retaliation.

“I am here!!” You sang, taking your skirts in your hands to take a few running steps in her direction. She did the same, meeting you halfway and wrapping her arms around your middle, asking to be coddled, while she was going on and on about how she needed your help with this one French book she was reading. You walked back to the house with her, a smile on your features and your arms around her smaller body, as you indulged in the fantasy of her being your daughter and of you being the mother she’d asked for counsel. You looked over your shoulder and saw that Benedict was watching you two. You couldn’t help but wonder whether he was imagining the exact same thing as you.

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After two hours of translations and musings about the difficult French language, Benedict came barging into the study, looking at Hyacinth with a quarrelsome expression.

“Sister,” he growled in a rather menacing tone, “are you kidnapping my wife?”

Holding both your hands on the pages of the big book, you tilted your head in his direction with a meaningful grin. “Oh, you!”

But Hyacinth wasn’t the youngest Bridgerton for nothing. Defiantly she stood up from her chair and walked towards him in the middle of the room. “How dare you!! You didn’t even knock!!”

Benedict almost flinched, when she drilled an authoritative finger into his chest. With seven older siblings, there really wasn’t much that seemed to scare her. He opened his mouth to speak, but was immediately interrupted.

“I am in the midst of a very important lesson and I am fairly certain you still remember how to breathe without (Y/N)!! So!! Fare thee well!!”

It was incredibly hard for you not to burst into a small laughing fit with Benedict looking positively puzzled and his youngest sister intonating every single word as if there was an exclamation mark behind it. Yet, you managed to hide your smile behind your hand as you feigned a cough, which, judging by the way your husband looked at you, Benedict easily identified as an act. He narrowed his eyes and looked from you back to his sister who was still planted before him with a vigour unlike her size and age.

“Very well.” He eventually said; but it wasn’t without a lightness at the end of his phrase – one that was giving him away. Not only to you who had only known him for a short time compared to Hyacinth who had grown up with him. She gasped out “NO!” and wanted to take a step back, but Benedict had already grabbed her and thrown her over his shoulder.

“BENEDICT!!” She screeched, still sounding very childlike, despite wishing to appear much more adult at her tender age. “LET ME DOWN!!”

You looked on with a smile, chuckling at the way Benedict was trying to avoid kicking feet from hitting him in the face. “Do you really think you intimidate me, sister?”

Hyacinth’ squeals mixed with hysterical giggles, when Benedict managed to pin down the swinging legs and started tickling the backs of her knees and calves, her fists drumming against his back. “Dohohoohn’t!!” She giggled, all vigour gone from her sweet voice that sounded much more like the one of a child again.

“Will you release (Y/N) and continue your ‘very important lesson’ some other time?” He asked teasingly, a wide grin appearing on his features when Hyacinth’ mirthful sounds started resonating through the study.

“I WILL I WILL!!” She conceded hastily, her hands trying to grab the fabric of his waistcoat. “Don’t tickle!!”

With an approving noise, Benedict stilled his hands and bent over to plant his sister back on the floor. Groaning from the effort, he shook out his arms when he’d finally managed it. “You are getting too tall for this, aren’t you?” The seriousness in his voice combined with the way he cocked his head to the side in wonder had you throw your head back with a laugh.

Hyacinth put her hands on her hips and looked up at her brother with a pout. “I do definitely hope so!!” She sneered, before planting a fist in the crook of his stomach and quickly making her way to the door. A small smile was grazing her features, when she turned around again in the doorframe, directing her question to you. “We will continue our lessons, tomorrow, yes?”

“Of course, Hyacinth! We will make time for it!” You responded with a smile of your own, closing the book about French history and getting up from your chair to join your husband who was over-dramatically enacting an on-the-brink-of-death scene in the middle of the room, coughing and wrapping his arms around his middle.

“Internal bleeding! Internal bleeding!” He repeated hoarsely, making it impossible for Hyacinth not to break out into a laugh. “You’re so annoying!” She giggled, quickly bustling away, when he took a menacing step in her direction.

When the door fell close behind her, he dropped the act immediately and turned towards you with a sigh of relief. “Finally!”

You made a very undignified noise, when his hands grabbed for the fabric of your dress and pulled you towards him, your bodies colliding in an inelegant way, full of hunger and devotion. Giggling, you turned your head to the side, when his lips found your neck, kisses and nibbles sending ticklish jolts into your hairline. “Stop it! What are you doing?”

“It appears, I am overcome,” he mumbled into your skin, taking a deep breath from the sensitive skin under your ear, “by a very strong need to spend some… quality time alone with you!”

“Quality time?” Moving your hands up his back, you allowed him to lead you backwards into the study, your steps mirroring his own until you reached the table with the big French history book. Your eyelids fluttered shut at the warm touch of his lips to your cheeks.

“Mhhh,” he agreed, his nose circling your own and his lips grazing your mouth as he spoke, “the rare, special occasion is one I am very ambitious for!”

Smoothly, Benedict’s hands moved under your behind to lift you ever so slightly and place you on the table, the book shifting backwards, giving room to you. You moved your hands from his back to his cheeks, your hands cupping the face in front of you and holding it steady for the kiss you planted on its lips. Benedict smiled peacefully, his blue eyes sinking into yours. “I love my family dearly, dearly, dearly… but I need to have these moments with you alone, truly alone!”

The heart within your chest contracted for one beat, sending a slightly painful sting through your body. It was only a short moment, only one small hint of fear, but it sufficed to make you realize that you were scared Benedict might not actually be as thrilled as you were about the child blossoming in your belly. What if it was too early? What if Benedict still required, perhaps even hoped for some time without a family? What if he would be overwhelmed by a family that grew and grew and never seemed to allow you two any more time alone? You gulped and suddenly moved your hands back to his shoulders, holding on tightly.

Benedict seemed to notice that something was off, moving his head away from the side of your face to look you in the eyes. His gaze was soft and sweet and you wanted to drown in it, wanted to get lost in it as he moved his hands all over your body. But for now there was no more movement aside from his nose brushing against yours, a movement equal to a question.

“Are you alright?”

You realized you’d been holding your breath and took a deep one, before pushing your face into his as affectionately as you could. “I just want you,” you whispered, meaning it in every way possible, from head to toes, from now on to the end of your days, from his soul to his heart to every memory you’d make together. You wanted him. And every single part of him that grew through you. You could only hope that it would be the same way for him. “I want you so badly,” you continued, your voice almost hoarse from raw emotion which made his eyes flicker with a suddenly burning fire. Devotion radiated from his kiss adjoined to something that went deeper, something that was inexplicable and yet so strangely clear.

“You have me!” He growled into your neck, breathing your scent another time and kissing the vein running up your skin with an urgence. “You will have me! Entirely!”

You smiled against his cheek and moved your lips to his mouth to steal a kiss from its corner. That made him smile your favourite smile and suddenly you were lifted off of the table and carried towards the door. Moving your arms around his neck, you held on to him, running your eyes up and down his face to not miss a single sign of his happiness. You didn’t have to ask where he’d take you, knowing full well that he would tug you into the sheets of his bed, caressing your skin with his own and joining your bodies to become one. You wanted to be as close to him as possible, and afterwards you would tell him, afterwards you would try to find the right words and hope for a reaction that wouldn’t scare you. Right now, he was right, it would be just the two of you.

He opened the door… and ran into Anthony.

“Anthony!” He exclaimed in surprise, not yet considering to drop you which you found at the same time embarrassing and sweet. Trying to turn around in his embrace, you looked at Anthony over your shoulder, greeting him with a quite awkward “Hello!”

“Where have you two been, I was looking all over for you… wait, don’t answer that!” He waved his hand around in front of his chest, the corners of his lips twitching ever so slightly. “Though I do have to say, I’d like to know if the study should be er… cleaned!”

“Brother!!” Benedict groaned, his head dropping on your shoulder, the warmth from his reddened cheeks burning your skin.

Chuckling, you patted Benedict’s shoulder to signal you’d like to be let down. The muscles in his arms clenched from unwillingness, but he did indulge you and let you slide to a standing position.

You decided not to answer the last comment and simply tilted your head to the side expectantly, your unashamed smile making Anthony’s own grow. “What was it you needed from us?”

“Not I,” Anthony responded, his amusement at his brother’s unmistakable frustration quite obvious. “But our dear mother. She needs your opinions for the upcoming summer ball. Apparently Daphne and Kate would like you to join in on the preparations.”

Benedict groaned loudly. You tried not to send him a sympathetic glance and merely nodded at Anthony’s request, asking in return where you could find the other ladies.

“Don’t worry, brother!” Anthony consoled your husband, when you took his hand in a silent goodbye. “I’ll make sure no one bothers you after dinner. I know how hard it can be to find… some time alone.”

Benedict actually felt compelled to smile at his brother in gratitude, before sending you one more longing gaze. “I can’t wait.”

Then Anthony wrapped an arm around his shoulder and pulled him in one direction and the preparations for the ball pulled you in the other. During the time it took to walk to the ladies of the house, you couldn’t stop worrying about what Benedict’s reaction would be once you told him of the pregnancy after dinner.

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Being at the table with the entire family always put Benedict into good spirits, no matter how much he’d longed for a moment alone with you throughout the day. He made faces at Daphne, poked Eloise into the side until she almost choked on a piece of bread, laughed at Colin’s jokes and exchanged warm glances with his mother. You were having lovely conversations with Kate and spoke some more to Hyacinth about her French. Everyone at the table tried to outdo Colin and his funny remarks, but no one quite was as good at it as he was and he seemed to be taking great pride in it.

Seeing Benedict interact with his family reassured you in a way you had not entirely realized you’d needed. Yes, you were both in great need of being close to each other in private. Yes, you were both enjoying it immensely, when no one interrupted your time together. But being at the table with everyone, conversing, joking, teasing and simply enjoying each other’s company was something Benedict would never have to ‘suffer’ through. Time spent with his family was time well spent and you could see in his face that he was more than content. e

It took away so much of the fear you’d felt throughout the day, the fear that he might not be happy about the news that you were with child. This was his world and he would be, you were very certain, delighted to have such a world of his own.

Kate and Anthony were the first to leave the table – in the dim candle light you couldn’t tell for sure, but it looked like he was waggling his eyebrows at you – and after a while, you, Benedict, Daphne and Simon all decided to do the same, bidding your adieus from the family for the day and retiring to your chambers.

Benedict was in high spirits which was most likely due to the lovely evening and the prospect of finally being alone with you without fear of interruption. You suppressed a squeal, when he decided to chase you up the stairs, scooping you into his arms at the far end of the hallway that followed and banging open the door to your shared room with his shoulder. You giggled uncontrollably, when he kicked the door closed with his foot and practically ran towards the bed to throw you on the covers.

“I am going to jump out of the window if anyone dares interrupt us here and now!” He hissed humorously, taking off his waistcoat as quickly as he could and starting to work on his breeches.

Laughing cheerfully, you moved your hands in his direction, demanding him to get into the bed this instant. “Must you seriously be standing over there while getting undressed?”

“Where are my manners?” He gasped out in fake shock and all but dove into the sheets next to you, grabbing your waist and pulling you underneath him, drawing more silly laughter out from you when he pushed his face into the silk covering your belly. “Taking off clothes is almost as intrusive as my siblings! We will simply ignore them!!”

It was hard to speak through your laughter, but somehow you managed to grab a hold of his head and pulled it up towards you. “Ben, please, I must breathe! I must breathe!”

Grinning widely, he pushed his face against yours. “You should have to quit laughing for that first!”

It took a moment, but you did manage to calm your breathing, your arms wrapped around your husband who had his head propped up on one hand and was looking at you with a lazy smile. “Better?”

That almost made you burst out laughing again, but you managed to control yourself and instead grabbed him by the shoulders and changed positions, ending up on top of him. He huffed out in surprise, but his smile was big enough to light up the room, when he grabbed your thighs on either side of his hips.

“I feel deliciously trapped!”

“I have something to tell you!” You mused, searching for his hands with your own to interlock your fingers. Apparently you were in need of holding on to him while telling him what would come next. The pressure of his palms against your own quieted your mind and helped you focus on the matter at hand.

“Something you have to pin me down for?” He joked, his eyes widening with amusement. For you, his question brought back a small amount of dread and your smile fell ever so slightly.

“I… I hope not!” With hesitation you looked away, running your thumbs over his hands to calm yourself, while you were in search of what exactly to say. It would appear easy enough, declaring that one was pregnant, but, in truth, uttering the words was quite powerful and made the reality of the phrase stand out quite drastically.

“What is it?” Benedict asked, sitting up slightly and observing with a portion of concern the way you were biting the inside of your cheek. “(Y/N), is everything alright?”

You moved your eyes up, locking your gaze with his and taking a deep breath. It was all there, in his eyes: the love, the devotion, the care. He would be delighted. Yes, there was no other way…

“Ben, I know that sometimes it feels like we do not have a lot of time to ourselves.” He snorted in response to your words, underlining them with his reaction.

“The time I get to spend alone with you is a most cherished treasure.” You continued and slightly bucked your hips against his, making him chuckle softly. “Now, it is simply so…” You gulped and looked from left to right, before deciding to bring both of his hands to your belly. “It is so that… I am almost one hundred percent sure that I am…”

“YOU’RE PREGNANT!!!” Benedict shouted over your poor attempts of uttering the words you found so hard to actually say out loud and before you had a chance to asses the situation, you were pushed on your back, with your head by the foot of the bed and your husband fussing over you. His big hands were moving from your cheek to your belly to his head and back to your belly, all while he made noises of the purest and most natural delight you’d ever seen in a man.

“You’re pregnant!! You’re pregnant!!” He kept on repeating, his joy reverberating through every single nerve end on his body and conjoining with your own. All the insecurities of the day fell off your shoulders and the light weight that remained made your eyes water.

“Oh, my love,” you almost sobbed out, “I am so happy to see you react this way!”

“How could I not?” Benedict laughed with joy, cupping your face and kissing you and kissing you some more, small wet drops falling on your cheeks, when his emotions got the better of him. “We will be parents!” He choked out, before kissing you again and moving his hands to your belly again. “You are having a baby!” He uttered with teary eyes, sinking down on the level of your middle to place a thousand kisses on your gown. “A baby!!” He repeated again, before laughing incredulously.

You wrapped your arms around him and pulled him up and towards you. You needed to have him close as you buried your face in his shoulder and allowed tears of your own to run down your cheeks. “I love you!” You whispered with all your affection. “I love you and I love you and I love you!!”

More of Benedict’s tears fell on your face, when he moved himself up slightly, the salty traces mingling with your own. “My love,” he hummed softly, “you were worried, weren’t you? You were worried, it would make me fear for our alone time! Oh, (Y/N), I don’t fear that! I don’t fear a single thing when it comes to us!”

He buried his face in your neck to breathe you in, before looking at your belly again – it would become a recurrent thing in the following nine months, as your belly grew, he would look and look and look with all the adoration he was capable of. “I am beyond happy!”

“As am I!” You placed your hand over his own on your belly, as you were starting to realize the truth of this situation together, as you started to talk about names and traits, as you started to exchange assumptions and plans. It was exactly the way you’d hoped it would be.